Technically it should be happy birthday to The Witcher 3, but it’s always better to put a face to an event, don’t you think? Yes, this week we all celebrated the fifth anniversary of CD Projekt’s most favoured baby (until later this year, at least). Join Alice Bee, VidBud Matthew and Nate as they discuss how Geralt would do on Come Dine With Me, if he’d be alright to have a pint with, and also maybe the game itself a bit.

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One of the first things you do in The Witcher 3‘s Blood And Wine DLC is fight a giant. He comes at you moments after you arrive in Toussaint (read: France), when a very silly looking knight rides past you while frantically tilting at a windmill. The giant erupts from that windmill, flailing his club around and sending errant sheep flying. They roll and baa, while you do cool sword moves around succulent countryside. It is both glorious and gorgeous, and a downright terrific way to kick off some of the best adventuring in videogames.

I sure hope you like being heralded in verse.

They really go for that sort of thing in Toussaint. They go hard. It is a silly place, where people swear oaths on herons and dress up as rabbits for courtly nonsense. Geralt, as you might expect, makes a fantastic foil. Especially when he joins in. (more…)

It has taken me a long, long time to figure out how I, personally, can enjoy The Witcher 3. It got recommended to me loads because it’s a big flouncy fantasy RPG, which is my type of thing. But playing it was like running into a brick wall. Or a wattle and daub wall. Or maybe the planks of a grim, windowless wooden hut? Basically, I find it really difficult to inhabit Geralt. Rather than being a John Q. Everyman type, he is a strongly characterised man whose history I do not know – and which I’m not prepared to read an entire library worth of books or play two previous very long games to uncover, thank you very much.

Neither do I feel like I am a protector helping Geralt along, because he is clearly much better at his job without me, given all his expertise in monsters and the seven different types of weeds that’ll kill them and such. I ran into trouble playing it last night, for example, because I could not figure out how to brew more of the Swallow potion. The Witcher 3 would go more smoothly without me, the equivalent of an unqualified middle-manager, forcing my involvement on Geralt. But I have come up with a solution, and that is to ignore almost all of The Witcher 3.

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If a Netflix show and years of people going on about it have finally convinced you to consider giving The Witcher a go, good news: to celebrate the fifth birthday of The Witcher 3, the whole series is on sale. Both Steam and GOG have big Witcher sales, including the whole RPG series plus various spin-offs. £10 for The Witcher 3 and both expansions is a good price for so many grimaces and weary sighs, every one of them great.

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I’m one of those people.

I love the idea of The Witcher 3. I enjoy playing the game, even. But I seem to be cursed. Every year or so I sit down to play it, full of resolve to see it through to the end. But every damn time, despite finding myself increasingly drawn in to its meticulously crafted fantasy world, and despite revelling in my role as a sort of ultra-violent Hagrid within it, I only ever manage a handful of hours before getting distracted and drifting away from the game. By the time I’ve got the urge to come back again, I’ve forgotten what was going on. And so I start again, like a gaming Sisyphus forever pushing a grumpy mutant up a hill.

I’ve played the start of The Witcher 3 five times now. And so, to commemorate its fifth anniversary and my impending, inevitable sixth attempt at playing it, I’ve decided to see how much of the game I can remember and synopsise here, without cheating and googling anything. I’m going to try and do this in one take, so I can’t second guess myself, and I’ve even done some illustrations, to help with your immersion in the tale. So, are you prepared? Let’s go!

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GOG’s Spring sale begins today, and there are lots of free Witcher goodies up for grabs to kick things off. Alas, The Witcher games themselves aren’t free as part of the goodie pack (although they’re all heavily discounted as part of GOG’s Witcher Universe Collection bundle), but it does include lots of Witcher soundtracks, comics, art, wallpapers and a video of some Witcher music being played at The Video Game Show concert. You’ll need to get ’em quick, though, as the goodies pack is only available until 2pm UTC tomorrow (March 18th). Read on below for some more highlights.

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I cannot believe that that damn song from the Netflix Witcher series only took 10 minutes to write. When Toss A Coin To Your Witcher was thrust upon us by Jaskier just before Christmas, I was not prepared for how catchy the damn thing would be. And neither were the Netflix show’s creators, apparently, as the idea for the song came to co-executive producer Jenny Klein while she was thinking about Geralt in the car.

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Ah, religion. I know this is a topic we all have trouble agreeing on. But fear not, humble practitioner of a good pray, I am not here to squint angrily at your favourite book of life advice. I m only here for the videogame religions. The ones that are very, very, very, very bad. You know, the gun-loving cults and the xenophobic people-burners. The (mostly) fictional religions that involve an uncommon volume of murder. Step this way, sprinkle yourself with some of my 100% genuine oil of the almighty, and peruse the 9 most dodgy religions in games.

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That scrappy Polish studio that developed a computer RPG based on the monster hunting novels by Andrzej Sapkowski is all grown up. CD Projekt, parent company of The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 developers, are now valued as the second largest gaming company in Europe, beat only by Ubisoft.

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CD Projekt say The Witcher 3 has now sold enough on Steam to qualify for the biggest sales cut available on Valve’s platform. Hitting $50 million ( 38m) means Valve will only take 20% – which is still more than Epic take from all and any sales from any game. Congratulations to The Witcher for reaching that 80% cut, but it is wild that even a game this big has taken so long to score Steam’s best deal.

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